Sunday, August 01, 2010

Happy birthday, my oldest one. Oh, I’ve had the whole day to say this to her. Having a summer birthday has made things easy – she has nearly always managed to return home for a visit around this day, and this year it’s not even fair to say that she is visiting, as in a few weeks Madison will be as much her home as it is mine.

Happy birthday anyway.

Her sister and her dad are here as well and this girl sure loves it when we pack in a full day of family favorites – a Hubbard breakfast, a walk by the lake...

and a picnic at the Spring Green American Players Theater.

That’s not easy to pull off when the show (All’s Well that Ends Well) starts at 6 and you have to throw together the well thought-out menu – lobster rolls (thanks, Seafood Center, for agreeing, just this once, to boil the lobsters for us – anything to save time!), ricotta and mint stuffed and fried zucchini blossoms with fresh tomato sauce, jalapeno curried corn, and pesto pasta. Still, we all cook and we amaze each other at how quickly we can pull this meal together.

By 5, we are at the picnic tables at APT, ready to eat.

The evening is warm, but there is a faint breeze. We walk through the forest to the theater -- a routine that is so familiar! How many years have we been coming to see a Shakespeare play here? Nearly twenty?

After, we drive back to Madison just as the night is setting in. Three young deer cross the road in front of us and I have to be glad that we were driving slowly enough to love and not disturb their presence.

At home, the chocolate on the orange almond cake did not dissolve in the heat of the day. As we come closer to midnight, she plays her new guitar and her sister and I settle into that calm and warm moment that you experience only at the end of a very beautiful day.